California has a similar, but much larger, hydroelectric plant where the California Aqueduct reaches the Los Angeles basin.[1] It's reversible; it can be used either for power generation and pumping. LA Water and Power usually pumps water uphill late at night when power is cheap, then lets it down in midafternoon when power is expensive.
If it is what I think it is, that would mean extracting energy from the water's movement, movement that most likely has been created via pumping. So... moving energy from pumping back to energy, with most likely a big loss in the process. Anyone to explain me what I didn't get ?
From the article: "The LucidPipe™ Power System uses the gravity-fed flow of water inside a PWB pipeline to spin four 42” turbines that are now producing electricity for Portland General Electric (PGE) customers under a 20-year power purchase agreement (PPA) with the utility"
They can do this in New York as well, they get 95% of their water from gravity fed sources - so much that they have to install periodic pressure-breaks as the water comes down from mountains to avoid too much pressure in the system.
"The project will generate approximately $2 million worth of renewable energy capacity over the 20-year PPA period, enough electricity for more than 150 homes in Portland."
And that's assuming full capacity (100kW)... That's too bad.
But I don't quite understand what you're doing with the $. You're taking how much it'll generate in kWh vs how much they say it'll generate in worth of energy and getting a $/kWh. But isn't the $kWh just determined by the market?
Why not: 2,000,000 / .02 (your number) = 66,666,666 kWh over the lifetime of the 'project', not individual units, which has 4 turbines (this is a similar value to yours x4).
The same new was submitted a few days ago from a different source that has a little more of information. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9041249 (2 points, 9 days ago, 0 comments)
